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| "Cosmopolis" was published the week of my presentation on Don
DeLillo (that I had to read, I think, 6 DeLillo novels for), but I
finally got around to reading it. I was interested in reading the
novel because DeLillo was halfway through writing it when 9/11
happened. Because DeLillo's novels usually operate with America on the
dissecting table, I was interested to read what, if anything, he had to
say after 9/11.
The entire novel centers around the uber-rich
28-year-old protagonist who wants to drive across New York City in a
limo to get a haircut. In the meantime, he risks losing his entire
empire because of the rising value of the Yen. As funny as it sounds
(sarcasm intended), it's not a happy novel. You really find yourself
hating the protagonist more and more as the story goes on...waiting and
waiting and waiting for his redemption. And even though the novel is
only 200 pages, I didn't think the asshole was ever going to get his
damn haircut.
With the pipelines of conspiracy and discontent
bubbling beneath the surface of the novel, it's easy to see that if
DeLillo had finished this novel before 9/11, it would have seemed
prophetic. You can't help but read the novel knowing that 9/11 is
coming, and the effect is that we get a not-so-nostalgaic look at the
booming late-90s.
It was an interesting read that seemed long
and arduous and yet short at the same time. If anyone is interested in
diving into some DeLillo, I'd recommend "White Noise," "Americana,"
"Underworld," or "The Body Artist" before taking a drive in
"Cosmopolis." | | |
| Even if I did honestly like the band (which I don't), I don't think I'll ever be confident enough in my own sexuality to actually tell people that I like Five for Fighting. There, I said it.
On a completely unrelated note, yesterday, my lovely wife went out and changed our cell phone numbers from the San Diego area code that they were still on (we haven't lived in San Diego in almost 3 years) to local numbers. In the process of changing our numbers we had to switch to a crappier, more expensive plan, but we also got new cell phones. So, instead of calling everyone I know to let them know that my cell phone number was now different, I tried to do the lazy impersonal thing and send everyone a mass text message that my number was now different.
I failed miserably, however, because I didn't actually put my name on the text message. So, within seconds, I got text message after text message of people demanding to know who I was. It was a little embarrassing.
Anyways, for those of you who may have missed my nameless text message. My new cell phone number is: 972-273-9965 (Cheryl's is 972-273-9964).
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| Further proof that sex needs to be talked about more in church:
"A loose tongue will often find itself in a tight spot." - seen on a church billboard somewhere between Harrah, OK and Choctaw. I'm meeting with 4 of the 5 other teachers from University School tonight as a kind of farawell/ I-can't-believe-we-made-it-through-last-year kind of thing, so I thought it would be useful (to myself) to briefly recap some of the highlights of last year, so that we have stuff to talk about.
1. Rats - always a crowdpleaser. Yes, our school had a rat problem. And I've always been under the impression that rats hide during the day and then come out at night when nobody's around. No, these were bold rats, who didn't mind prancing about the ceiling in the middle of class. When an exterminator finally showed up and set up traps, he hadn't even set his last trap before two rats had already met their demise in the ceiling with violent flouncing about and ultrasonic screaming to their mommies. And this was in the middle of class! And rats that were caught in other traps that night were never removed. The exterminator never came back, so our students got a science lesson in how bad a rotting rat carcas can smell. I honestly think that the only reason the rat smell went away a week later was because of a subsequent ant problem.
2. Meeting parents who were genuinely afraid of their child.
3. Being threatenned by a wannabe gang-banger who is later shot in the stomach in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
4. After reading Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" 3 times in class, students finally understanding the descriptions of rooster Chanticleer's sexual prowess.
5. For some reason our school was overrun with roly polys this spring, so one day after some students had finished their work, I enlisted them to capture as many of the little devils as they could and then to put them on the science teacher's desk. She was delighted.
6. Through a strange series of events, our lunch lady emerging as the head administrator of our school. That's right, for a period of about a month and half, our superior was a woman whose specialty was hotdogs and prepackaged bologna sandwiches and whose education ended in the blur between her junior and senior year of high school.
Well, that's enough for now.
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| My wife and I went to McAlester OK for the weekend for my mom's 50th b-day party, and then on Sunday, we attended the church where I was a member for about 17 years. Anyways, the preacher preached a sermon and it was just like every sermon I'd heard before. Not bad, just familiar. And as i was listenning to it, I realized that there are (at least) two things wrong with every sermon I'd heard in that church as well as many other Southern Baptist Churches in Oklahoma and Texas:
1. The sermons are not people-centered.
The sermon consisted of a chapter in Ephesians in which the preacher went verse by verse, stopping after each verse to explain what each verse "said," and then moved on to the next verse, etc. Really, he ended up preaching about 9 little sermon vignettes that I don't really remember at all. Why do I not remember anything? Because the theme of each of these little vignettes had no connection with a concrete life experience. They all just sounded like "You're going to be tempted to sin. Don't sin." In the same way an English teacher can teach the langauge and not the student, he taught the Bible and not the congregation. It should be important to note that although Jesus was very familiar with the scriptures (if they were called scriptures back then), he didn't preach chapter and verse! He taught in parables, parables that were relevant to his audience and that connected to their life experiences.
2. Spirit = Good. Flesh = Bad.
This problem is just huge and, I think, largely the fault of Plato. Just about everybody who has attended a Southern Baptist Church has heard a the claim that your flesh, which is worldly and evil is in a constant battle with your Spirit, which, if saved, is perfect and good. First off, this explanation has always made me want to hurl because it just invites the notion that our lives on Earth are meaningless and that all we're really doing is waiting to die so that we can escape these sinful bodies (that God created I might add) and so our perfect spirits can go to heaven.
Second, how do you decide which desires are "of the flesh" and which ones are "of the spirit?" If I desire a glass of water, is this evil? Imagine how this little metaphysical explanation (Spirit = Good, Flesh = Bad) applies to marriage. My friend Ben, a Southern Baptist preacher, tells me that although other preachers like to say that the biggest problem in marriage is money, the biggest problem in marriage really is physical intimacy. It's such a big problem that most preachers don't want to talk about it because they're having the same problem themselves. You just can't go through your entire life thinking that sex is evil because it's "of the flesh" and flesh = evil, and then get married and expect to quit thinking sex is evil.
I'm certainly not calling for a "deconstruction" of the "duality" of good and evil (note the fancy postmodern terms there). I still believe in good and evil, but it's just too easy to say that the body is all evil and the spirit is all good, and that somewhere in the midst of those two is what makes you an individual. Honestly, I think the answer to this delimma is hidden somewhere in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence," but I'm not quite sure how to articulate the book's link to Christianity just yet.
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| "I'm as calm as a fruit stand in New York, and maybe as strange."
-Ryan Adams "Heartbreaker"
So, I got fired from my waiter job. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. The manager was just cleaning house, firing another manager in the process. Now, with about two more weeks of summer left, I do a lot of this:
That's right. I've decided that I do society an even greater service as a doggie pillow.
In other news, Cheryl passed the big state/national real estate test, which, apparently is very difficult. So if anyone is thinking about buying/selling a house in the DFW area, let her know.
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